


The beauty of living well

by greenet



Category: Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Gen, midwinter celebration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenet/pseuds/greenet
Summary: Jeevan and Kirsten meet again.





	The beauty of living well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hilandmum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilandmum/gifts).



YEAR 25

Jeevan misses things from Before at intervals - he goes months without thinking about spices or bananas or coffee, but then something reminds him: a scent, a time of year, a flash memory of being tired and needing to wake up quickly - and then he misses it keenly. 

It doesn’t snow much in the McKinley settlement. It’s happened -- Jeevan remembers the look of awe on Frank’s face the first time his son saw snow fall -- but it’s rare. Mostly it just gets cold and raw and rainy. 

He learned to see the rain coming early on in his travels to the south. Before it had seemed like a funny Hollywood movie affectation, something a fisherman or an aging cowboy might do for ‘authenticity’, but it quickly became second nature to Jeevan to look at the sky and judge whether he needed to search out shelter now or if he could wait a while. 

Now it’s automatic. The skies are clear though. He thinks it’s going to be a nice night for festivities. 

Daria, his wife, has duties as one of the founders. Founder status doesn’t really matter the rest of the time, but during celebrations or feasts, the McKinley people like it when they take on roles as organisers and speechmakers and judges of the children’s costume parties (everyone gets a prize). 

It took them only four or five years to get into a yearly cycle that resembled what Jeevan is vaguely aware were the old agricultural society’s cycle of spring celebrations, midsummer celebrations, harvest feasts and midwinter feasts. It just felt right to take a break from normal life and meet up with neighbours and eat and drink and be merry. Jeevan loves it.

Jeevan cooks. There is a travelling company of actors and musicians here for the first time ever. The children are excited and curious and fearful. The company hadn’t been heading anywhere in particular -- “exploring new territory,” the conductor said -- and the McKinley settlement had invited them to stay for the Midwinter feast in exchange for a performance.

They’re going to perform a Shakespeare play: Much Ado About Nothing. Something lighthearted for the festivities. Jeevan fleetingly thinks of the last play he ever saw. Jeevan knows the play they’re doing because Frank watches every rehearsal and then comes running to ask what certain words mean. Sometimes Jeevan doesn’t know either. “It probably makes sense in context,” he says.

The settlement pools their food for the feast. It’s been happening regularly and Jeevan still struggles to plan a menu for upwards of one hundred and fifty people, adults and children. 

Daria laughs when he complains. “Oh, you love it. If somebody else took charge, you’d pout through the entire feast,” she says fondly.

She is right, but that does not make it easier to calculate the amount of fish and fowl needed to feed them all.

“Stew is festive right?”

Daria gives him a kiss. “Very. I’m taking Baby and the little one to Hyolin’s for the speech writing party.” Daria loves speeches. Jeevan thinks it’s cute.

They have cookbooks. Some are useless, relying on appliances that no longer work, or spices and produce they can no longer access, but there are useful ones as well. Private recipe books and centuries-old cookbooks and the written down result of trial and error. Jeevan has a stack of them in front of him as he tries to figure out what to make. 

He knows there will be plenty of potatoes and carrots. McKinley’s children have already been volunteered by their parents as cleaners and peelers of vegetables. 

The settlement has a herb garden for flavor, painstakingly put together and maintained by an ex-accountant who once had a window sill with dill and parsley bought at the supermarket.

Jeevan misses spices sometimes when he thinks about it. Usually he doesn’t. Jeevan has realised that he’s very good at living in the present, enjoying exactly what he’s got without wishing for something else in a way he never would have predicted before.

He loves Daria and the children and the settlement, and even the struggle of menu planning for one hundred and fifty souls every ninety days or so.

He’s not cooking it all on his own, of course. He’s not even really doing the planning all on his own. But the main dishes are his.

Mae wants to make desserts and has been hoarding apples all fall. Fruits have been canned and dried and stored, because where once everything was available always, now things are in season or they are not, and then you prepare. 

Jonas bakes. Tortillas and little rolls and flatbread. Not fancy maybe but good.

Jeevan is a healer but even with a hundred and fifty people and surrounding settlements, he’s not called upon frequently. He has time to be in charge of the main courses.

During the feast he ends up sitting next to the actor who played Beatrice, who introduces herself as Kirsten and compliments him on dinner. She looks very different without the dress and wig, sterner, not so bright. He notices that she has three knives tattooed on her arm. But she is friendly, if not talkative, and she clearly appreciates the food, which Jeevan in turn appreciates.

“Have you been travelling with the company for long?” he asks,

She nods. “Yes, it’s been years now. It’s interesting work. I enjoy it.”

They talk lightly, conversationally, about happy things, because it’s a feast, a celebration of being alive, and they are strangers.

As they talk, their accents become stronger. Jeevan never quite lost his, but he’s been living in Virginia for a long time now, it’s been watered out. 

“Oh, you used to be from up north too,” Kirsten says.

“Yes, I was. I remember the heavy snows, and the cold!” Jeevan shivers theatrically, a little drunk, a lot pleased with how the evening has gone. He’s kept an eye on the food, and it looks like it’ll be just a little left over, and that is as it should be. “You too?”

“Yes, but I was very young, so I don’t remember much,” she says and shrugs. She looks as though what she does remember isn’t happy.

“I think my son has been to every one of your rehearsals,” Jeevan says, changing the topic. “In the old days, he’d probably be asking for your autograph. He’s very taken with you.”

She frowns briefly. “Oh, my name. I remember. Yes, children always seem to find us entertaining.” She smiles. “Kids like theatre even if they’ve never seen it before. Sometimes they want to be a part of it too.” 

Both of them are remembering three little girls on stage playing King Lear’s daughters.

Jeevan goes home late in the night, carrying one sleepy child on his back, while Daria carries another, safe in the knowledge that the smallest one is being looked after by two reliable, if currently blissfully in love, teenagers they’ve seen grow up.

A good feast, a good week. Something to remember later.

Frank clutches a well-used copy of a Shakespeare play in his hand as he falls asleep in his bed. A gift from the company. Something to remember them by.


End file.
